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Wrecking equipment this morning ripped into the long-vacant building that once housed the Club Phoenix go-go rock bar and before that the Odyssey gay bar.

In an ironic twist — and a dangerously close call — the long-time former owner of the property, Jeanette Bender, drove around a police barricade and passed by the site as a brick wall was falling down, with the bricks crashing onto the street just next to her car. Asbury Park Fire Department public information officer Garrett Giberson Jr. identified Bender as the driver to the Sun.

The demolition is part of a streetscape project for Cookman Avenue, and some portions of surrounding streets, undertaken by waterfront redeveloper Asbury Partners to install curbing, sidewalks, lighting and landscaping. The project includes demolition of the now-vacant structures in this mostly empty stretch of Cookman between the downtown and the waterfront.

The cost of the project is over $500,000, according to Brian Cheripka of Asbury Partners. The purpose of the project — which has a completion goal of July 4 — is to increase the pedestrian traffic between the downtown and the waterfront, Cheripka has said.

For a previous Sun story on the demolition and the streetscape, please click here.

 

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